The New Zealand Government’s record on blocking climate action.

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Page - May 18, 2015

The National led government has an appalling record with regards to tackling climate change. And their own official figures speak for themselves. Emissions are currently on track to be 50 per cent higher than our promised reductions.

We have dropped out of Ernst and Young’s ranking as a desirable place to do clean energy business and we have been scored as “very poor” on the global Climate Change Performance Index 2015. And this despite having 80% renewable electricity.

Things must be bad and it’s clear to see why.

The Government has focused heavily on promoting oil, gas and minerals exploration, opening up vast areas of land and sea for fossil fuel extraction.

It has failed to introduce a single policy to encourage the growth in clean energy technology.

The Government made the controversial decision to withdraw from the second commitment term of the legally binding Kyoto Protocol established to reduce carbon pollution, damaging its international reputation on climate action.

The Government’s Energy Strategy is clearly focused on achieving a major escalation of petroleum and coal extraction whilst undermining our renewables industry by further weakening the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

The ETS has been the only tool of note that was introduced to drive down emissions from the nation’s biggest polluters. The introduction of the scheme in agriculture has been deferred indefinitely and continues to be subsidised to the tune of over a billion dollars of taxpayers money. Things have got so bad that even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has labelled the ETS a failure and a farce.

The government pulled the plug on biofuel subsidies in 2012, much to the dismay of the investors like then Greenstone Energy and the Biofuel Association.

The Government has renewed its commitment to the target of 90% of our electricity coming from renewable energy by 2025, but has made no plan for getting there. The Government’s latest estimates indicates that we will still only achieve 80% renewable electricity supply in 2030, with both coal and gas still supplying almost 20% of electricity demand.